by Urban Waite
For a long time these ideas feel like they run in place inside your head, waiting for the light to change so that they can sprint across the street and continue. For that I want to thank people like Reed and Tina Waite, Paul Sullivan, and Lizzie Stark, people who gave me a place to write for a week, two weeks, or even a few months. That time helped me get my thoughts in order and, more important, get those thoughts down on paper.
I also want to thank and apologize to everyone who went out for a drink with me after I finished up a long day of writing. This means you Dan Coxon, Mitch Cunanan, Carter Sickels, and Zachary Watterson. James Scott, thanks for always being there for a bourbon and a talk. Chip Cheek, thanks for letting me run ideas past you and thanks for sharing your ideas with me. Thanks to both of you for putting up with my grumpiness and overall bad behavior, and helping me on many nights find my way.
To Debby DiDomenico, thanks for encouraging me to get out there into the woods and thanks, as always, for being my reader. To Tony Matson, Victoria Wang, Jan Turecek, and Hal-Bear, thanks for camping out in the deserts of New Mexico, waking up in an ice-covered tent, and enjoying every minute of our adventure (even if Hal-Bear’s badge didn’t open as many doors as we’d hoped).
From start to finish I owe a huge debt to everyone at Sobel Weber and the Abner Stein Literary Agency. In London, Caspian Dennis, Arabella Stein, and Sandy Violette, and in New York, Julie Stevenson, Adia Wright, Kirsten Carleton, and especially Nat and Judith, who read too many drafts of this project for me to count. Thanks so much to the two of you for everything. Your advice has been invaluable.
This book took me two years to write, about a year past my due date, and for that I want to thank Simon & Schuster U.K. for their continued support and faith in my work. Ian Chapman, Francesca Main, Maxine Hitchcock, and Clare Hey, thank you for simply being the best and always encouraging me on. To Peter Hammans in Germany, Takahiro Wakai in Japan, Manuel Tricoteaux in France, Susan Sandérus in Holland, and all my foreign publishers, thank you so much for the e-mails, conversations, and support these last couple years.
In the States I want to thank my editor David Highfill of William Morrow for always being honest with me, for asking questions, and for being in general a very down-to-earth guy. The world is a better place now that I know you’re out there doing literary good. I also want to thank Jessica Williams for keeping me on track these last couple months. To Laura Cherkas and her team of copyeditors, thanks for making my bad grammar seem not so bad, and for letting me keep some of my comma splices.
I spent a lot of time on the road in the last few years and I owe something of this book to the places I went and the people I met. To my friend Justin St. Germain, whom I met years ago when we were waiters at Bread Loaf, thanks for recommending Oakley Hall’s Warlock. And then thanks for yelling at me a few years later when I still hadn’t read it but you knew I should. You were right. It’s one fine book. Thanks to everyone at Sewanee, especially Kevin Wilson, who took some time away from his busy schedule to talk to me about second books. Thanks, I needed that more than you knew.
I learned a lot while I was away, listening to people, talking, and sharing stories. I don’t think I would have this book without that time. So thank you to the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate; to Sewanee; to the Cuyahoga County Library, which flew me out and put me up; and to the state of New Mexico and everyone there. But the person to whom I owe the biggest debt and the greatest thanks is my wife, Karen, who puts up with me and everything that entails. Which, in her words, seems to be a lot.
About the Author
URBAN WAITE is the author of The Terror of Living, named one of Esquire’s Ten Best Books of 2011. His short fiction has appeared in the Best of the West 2009 anthology, the Southern Review, and other journals. He has degrees from the University of Washington, Western Washington University, and Emerson College. He lives in Seattle with his wife.
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Also by Urban Waite
The Terror of Living
Credits
Cover design by Adam Johnson
Cover photograph © by s0ulsurfing/Jason Swain/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE CARRION BIRDS. Copyright © 2013 by Urban Waite. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-221688-5
EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780062216908
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